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Topic: Was Jesus an Iron Age cult leader?

Hi all :D (Before I start quick disclosure: I am an atheist but I am here to have an honest discussion and am not here to troll and offend anyone.)

When i read the account of Christ and I read it as a myth that was meant to be examined as testimony I imagine that instead of reading a book Luke, John, or Matthew are at the bar just telling me a story about some guy they knew. This is what a testimony is after all: a story someone tells you. If a book is written in the format of a testimony thus you must not necessarily believe the narrator at all times. Sometimes you can assume that he is lying or exaggerating things just like a stranger telling you a story at a bar would. (Sorry for the long intro but it will help the rest of this make sense... hopefully) So following this logic and using its lens to examine the bible I make 3 assumptions as I read the accounts of Christs life.

1 - Jesus is not divine and has no special powers. (ex. I've never seen a dude walk on water why would I believe a testimony that says someone saw someone do it somewhere.)

2 - No one else has special powers everyone is a human limited by the knowledge and culture of Iron Age Middle East.

3 - Jesus is corruptible just like every other person.

Now with all this in play as I go through the bible I hear a story about a Iron age Rabbi that ran an organization with lots of hall marks of a cult like abandoning families to follow a holy teacher, giving up wealth, and dedicating one entire life soul, body, and mind to the holy teacher. Further this holy teacher showed them a bunch of cheap parlor tricks. The holy teacher was so narcissistic and egocentric that anytime anything other then him comes up he tells you how unimportant it is compared to him and tells you to give up everything just to worship him and serve him.

Further he is reckless and his delusions of grandeur like thinking he is himself a god as well as his corrupt nature like soaking himself in a years wages worth of perfume in one sitting in front of a bunch of people who gave everything up to obey and follow him. The picture is clear. I do not see a wise and loving guy. I see Charles Manson or Marshall Applewhite.

Again, I am not here trying to offend anyone, I am just trying to honestly explain my thought process. Now that I explained my thoughts, what I really want to ask is what are yours? How do you read the bible? How do you see Jesus? What do you think were his motivations and aspirations? And most importantly why do you believe these things.

My analysis lead me to make this documentary about the life of Christ where I go into detail and develop my thesis from birth to crucifixion. If you care for such a thing here is a link.https://www.youtube.com...
(I will warn because it is based on the biblical account of the life of Jesus there is explicit content that is violent and sexual in nature in some parts of his life's account.)

Your Sources Claim - "But all breeds belong to a single species, so scientists have studied the breeds to better understand the workings of evolution, and how such great variation could have arisen within one group."

I pairing breed is not enough to have a population survive because of the lack of biodiversity peasant at least for mammals I know this for sure. As far as one species branching off into other species over a long period of time yeah that the story of life called evolution.

your statements about Jesus are deeply provocative. Just the title of the thread says it all.

You are pointing out shit like "jesus's delusions" and how he is egocentric (I could list all of these but there is no point) . Naturally that's upsetting to people who believe in christianity and you probably realize this too, so I find it unlikely that you are actually trying to reach out to christians. If you're trying to make anyone laugh, it's not christians.

@previous (E)> your statements about Jesus are deeply provocative. Just the title of the thread says it all.>> You are pointing out shit like "jesus's delusions" and how he is egocentric (I could list all of these but there is no point) . Naturally that's upsetting to people who believe in christianity and you probably realize this too, so I find it unlikely that you are actually trying to reach out to christians. If you're trying to make anyone laugh, it's not christians.>> Honestly I think you are just looking for an atheist circlejerk.

Thats not fair everything I stated is true these are really my beliefs. I described my real thought process. It took 3 months to write, illustrate, cite, and edit the documentary. I feel like I am being very honest in my approach while I understand my thoughts may be offensive but I have a purpose in describing them and that purpose is that you understand my process of arriving at my conclusions and this way you can explain your thought process and your conclusions or you can point out where you agree/disagree in my thought process or my conclusions. I feel like the way I laid this out is more then fair and I spent a good amount of time on my own looking into things before I got here.

@525,977 (E)> It's not necissarily your beliefs that put me off, it's the way you put them into words. You could make all the same points with less agressive language. >> and that's my advice to you because you catch more bees with honey than with tar.>> Do you understand where I'm coming from? If you want to reach out to someone with such a touchy subject, make a real effort to be friendly, maybe even submissive. >> Give those christians as much love as you did your drawings. You did a good job on those.

Fair enough and I see your point as far as a piece that can reach across the belief threshhold and start a conversation with true blue believers I agree its very aggressive and would not be very effective.

So getting back to this. Jesus was not even bright enough to get off a chunk of wood. Add to this that he was Jewish and the Romans were foreigners and his bible clearly said

Leviticus 25:44-46

You may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.

So he should have turned them Romans into Slaves - Of course he needed some shekels to buy slaves - I picked up this Info from another site 2day

@525,996 (Syntax)> So getting back to this. Jesus was not even bright enough to get off a chunk of wood. Add to this that he was Jewish and the Romans were foreigners and his bible clearly said>> Leviticus 25:44-46 >> You may purchase male or female slaves from among the foreigners who live among you. You may also purchase the children of such resident foreigners, including those who have been born in your land. You may treat them as your property, passing them on to your children as a permanent inheritance. You may treat your slaves like this, but the people of Israel, your relatives, must never be treated this way.>> So he should have turned them Romans into Slaves - Of course he needed some shekels to buy slaves - I picked up this Info from another site 2day

I did not hear of this Leviticus quote, thanks for sharing it.

Here is another example of Gods grace (Numbers 31:17-18) 17"Now therefore, kill every male among the little ones, and kill every woman who has known man intimately. 18"But all the girls who have not known man intimately, spare for yourselves."

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